Xbox Live Enhancements

[RagingBITCH]

Originally posted by: mlm

Originally posted by: RagingBITCH
Oh, you're completely right, just looked it up. Had always thought it was every weekend. Doh! It's well worth it though. It's the price of one game for a year...hard not to be able to justify it.

It's okay if you have disposable income, but if one of the reasons you go for the 360 is because it's cheaper than the PS3, Gold totally invalidates that argument.

Obscure and Pete hit the nail on the head.

And fact of the matter is, if you own a 360 or current gen gaming system, you have disposable income. Otherwise you'd never buy a new game. You wouldn't have $50 a month to spend on broadband internet service to play on Live. etc. Don't tell me cost is a huge factor because anyone who uses that excuse is grasping at straws. Someone who goes for the 360 because it's cheaper than the PS3 has nothing to do with spending $50 a year on a gaming service.

"Sony: OUR SERVICE IS FREE"

Great selling point. :thumbsdown:

 

[RagingBITCH]

Originally posted by: erwos
In general, I'm pretty satisfied with Live. I'm not a gold subscriber at the moment, since I don't have a whole lot of time to game right now, but I didn't feel like I was getting ripped off or anything when I was. My only quibble is, like others have said, that matchmaking could be better in a lot of games. Maybe Microsoft needs to expand the API to help with that?

Of course, "XBL" can also mean a lot of things. In this case, I'm choosing for it not to mean "video marketplace" or "arcade".

Well that depends on the developer/publisher, not Microsoft. You'd have to point the finger and blame the developer for the crappy matchmaking.

Some people here hate Halo 2's matchmaking - I hated it initially but after having played that game for years on Live, that is the best matchmaking system ever. You choose what style of game you want, you can have your buddies in your own party, and you get matched up with approximately the same level skilled players in a random map. It balances the load to an extent. I play R6:V a lot and hate how servers are either full or have 1 or 2 people. The ones that are full or close to full have stacked teams where it's all Elites versus all noobs. Doesn't make things fun.

 

[mlm]

Hey, I never said it was a good excuse, but some people certainly make that argument.

That being said, we've never been able to find the Live cards for under $30, and that's just cause we were lucky enough to find them on clearance at Target (the first of which was stolen out of the box).

 

[Skel]

Originally posted by: PricklyPete
Ok, let me preface this with the fact that I'm a huge fan of Xbox Live. After dicking around with the Playstation Network, I can confidently say that MS has a sizeable lead in terms of quality of service, features, and integration into games. I love that at anytime during a game I can click the Live button on my controller and see who is online, if I have any messages, etc. I love seeing when my friends get online with the small alert messages. I love being able to invite any of my friends into games I'm playing with just a couple button clicks. It really is fantastic once you learn all of the features. All of that being said...I do feel like there is room to improve. Here is my list of changes I'd love to see:

1) I want to have a Private Voice Chat with more than one person. I want to be able to have 3 or 4 of my good friends in the same voice chat room without having to hear all the clatter from the other players. This feature would allow for a more "lan party" like experience without actually having a lan party.

2) Better text input options. Maybe predictive text like we have in cell phones or possibly speech recognition (although this may take more resources than available to the system...I'm not interested in a performance hit). I'll be interested in how the controller keyboard will work...but it still would have to have some additional aids. I'm not interested in plugging a keyboard into the USB port and having a keyboard laying around in my living room.

3) A staging area for starting games that would allow friends to talk amongst themselves and vote on a game, pick a host, and give a visual indication of when everyone has the game loaded and ready (although the host could start up at anytime). This would just make playing with a group of friends at a given time easier instead of the mess of trying to figure out what game all of you want to play. Obviously just having the Private Voice Chat extended to more than 2 players would help out on this alone.

4) Make a free version of the service that allows online gameplay. Maybe one that makes you watch a commercial every once in a while (at key moments like when you start it up...or prior to starting up an Xbox Live game. I know it would be somewhat of a nuisance...but you always have the option to pay.


I'm sure I'll think of more over time. The service is great...but I can't wait to see what else they have in store...

Make sure you put them in Wish List and Feedback forum on xbox.com.

 

[indamixx99]

Was there a recent XBL update? Not the Spring console update.

The "last online time" on my friends list has disappeared. It's all blank, except for one of my friends who was online at the time. It's like they reset it. Anyone else experience this?

 

[tatteredpotato]

Originally posted by: indamixx99
Was there a recent XBL update? Not the Spring console update.

The "last online time" on my friends list has disappeared. It's all blank, except for one of my friends who was online at the time. It's like they reset it. Anyone else experience this?

There was an update around last week that made provisions for the wireless controllers for Rock Band and GH3